The encaustic mixed media in this show include those from the “Ephemeral Landscape”, “Island Geometry”, and “Weathered & Worn” series. The digital photography will include photo collages and photo montages from the Weathered & Worn series.

NOTE: For a larger view of each image, simply click on it once, then again; use your “back” arrow key to return to main page.

NEW DIGITAL MONTAGE: 2015-2016

Sand Dollar Sunset

This series of digital montage photos is printed on fibre or cold water press Epson fine art photographic paper, printed with Epson archival inks, and framed 16″x20″x1″ in a matt black steel frame with acid free white matt board.

Sand Illusions

Landscape of Memory

Adrift

Time Passes

Inflated Dreams

DIGITAL MONTAGE: 2013-2015

They Came From Away

Digital Montage Series: The digital montages explore memory, memorial, nostalgia, and surreal narrative, using historic photos (including ambrotypes, tintypes, and slides), digital and other personal photos, found objects, letters, postcards, Japanese collage papers, and other paper ephemera as primary source materials. Using an Epson Perfection V700 flatbed scanner, my D90 Nikon camera, and Adobe Photoshop CS5, I (metaphorically speaking), weave montages with loose threads of narrative built up out of layers of imagery from these different sources.

The montages are created intuitively: I begin with one image which will prompt me to look for another, and so it goes, with each step suggesting where the next should take me as ideas and emotional resonances develop. It is my hope that they will mean something different to each viewer – that the potentialities of meaning, emotional nuance and memory echo are many.

Once completed the montages are printed with archival inks (using an R2880 Epson printer) on fine art photographic Hot or Cold Press paper, adhered to wooden cradle supports with acrylic gel medium, and sealed with several layers of a UV protective semi-gloss acrylic topcoat medium and a matte UV varnish.

Ephemeral Landscape Series: These mixed media collage paintings explore memories of landscape, especially landscapes where nature and man-made structures meet. Using old discarded papers, book spines, stamps, photo transfers, and gold and copper leaf, and sometimes built from scraps of repeat patterning reminiscent of those found in nature and in scarred and repaired garments or urban landscapes, they contain traces and echoes of familiar spaces, evoke longings, and hint at hidden passages and dangerous abysses into the unknown. The passage of time is evident as the structures, be they natural and wild or created by humans, are often in a state of dissolution. Crumbling, falling down, breaking apart, the process of decay and change is underway. The photo transfers and cut-outs of small birds, animals and people from an old dictionary contribute to the mythic story-telling quality, creating moods of mystery, whimsy or melancholy.

Ephemeral Landscape #27 (2016) 16″ x 8″ x 1″

Ephemeral Landscape #27

Ephemeral Landscape #26 (2016) 6″ x 12″ x 1″

Ephemeral Landscape #26

Ephemeral Landscape #25 (2016) 6″ x 12″ x 1″ – Private Collection

Ephemeral Landscape #25

Ephemeral Landscape #24 (2016) 10″ x 10″ x 1.5″ – Private Collection

Ephemeral Landscape #24

Ephemeral Landscape #23 (2016) 12″ x 12″ x 1″

Ephemeral Landscape #23

Ephemeral Landscape #22 (2016) 12″ x 12″ x 1″

Ephemeral Landscape #22

Ephemeral Landscape #21 (2016) 12″ x 12″ x 1″

Ephemeral Landscape #21

Ephemeral Landscape #20 (2016) 12″ x 12″ x 1″

Ephemeral Landscape #20 (Private Collection)

Ephemeral Landscape #19 (2016) 16″ x 16″ x 1.5″

Ephemeral Landscape #19

Ephemeral Landscape #18 (2016) 6″ x 12″ x 2″

Ephemeral Landscape #18

Ephemeral Landscape #17 (2016) 18″ x 12″ x 2″

Ephemeral Landscape #17

Ephemeral Landscape #16 (2016) 12″ x 12″ x 2″ – Private Collection

Ephemeral Landscape #16

Ephemeral Landscape #15 (2016) 6″ x 12″ x 2″

Ephemeral Landscape #15

Ephemeral Landscape #14 (2016) 6″ x 12″ x 2″

Ephemeral Landscape #14

Ephemeral Landscape #13 (2016) 6″ x 12″ x 2″

Ephemeral Landscape #13

Ephemeral Landscape #12 (2016) 6″ x 12″ x 2″

Ephemeral Landscape #12

Ephemeral Landscape #11 (2015) 16″ x 20″ x 1″

Ephemeral Landscape #11

Ephemeral Landscape #10 (2015) 8″ x 8″ x 2″

Ephemeral Landscape #10

Ephemeral Landscape #9 (2015) 6″ x 12″ x 2″ – Private Collection

Ephemeral Landscape #9

Ephemeral Landscape #8 (2015) 6″ x 12″ x 2 – Private Collection

Ephemeral Landscape #8

“Ephemeral Landscape #7 (2015) 16″ x 16″ x 2″

Ephemeral Landscape #7

Ephemeral Landscape #6 (2015) 6″ x 12″ x 2″ – Private Collection

Ephemeral Landscape #6

Ephemeral Landscape #5 (2015) 6″ x 12″ x 2″ – Private Collection

Ephemeral Landscape #5

Ephemeral Landscape #4 (2014) 11″ x 14″ x 1″

Ephemeral Landscape #4

Ephemeral Landscape #3 (2014) 11″ x 14″ x 1″

Ephemeral Landscape #3

Ephemeral Landscape #2 (2014) 6″ x 12″ x 2″ – Private Collection

Ephemeral Landscape #2

Ephemeral Landscape #1 (2014) 6″ x 12″ x 2″ – Private Collection

Ephemeral Landscape #1

Patterns & Permutations Series: Patterns found in nature, patterns man made, and the echoes and overlaps between the two – in these four companion pieces, the adage “man imitates nature” becomes a game of repetitions, echoes and permutations, inviting the viewer to play with the pieces and follow their meanderings.

Patterns & Permutations #1-4 (2014) 20″ x 20″ x 2″

Patterns & Permutations #1-4

Collecting the PiecesSeries: Thematically comprised of patterning, echoes of rural landscapes, urban streets, and things falling, in this series society (and perhaps the self) is breaking down and the past is falling away. The paintings incorporate scraps of historic publications and other paper ephemera, photo transfers, and roadside and beach detritus, combined with a formal exploration of space as landscape and landscape as it is altered by human interaction.

Collecting the Pieces #8: Return (2015) 16″ x 16″ x 2″

Collecting the Pieces #8: Return

Collecting the Pieces #7: False Promise (2015) 12″ x 12″ x 1.5″

Collecting the Pieces #7: False Promise

Collecting the Pieces #6: Flightless (2014) 8″ x 8″ x 2″

Collecting the Pieces #6: Flightless

Collecting the Pieces #5: Working Fictions (2014) 16″ x 16″ x 2″

Collecting the Pieces #5: Working Fictions

Collecting The Pieces #4: Weathered (2014) 14″ x 14″ x 2″

Collecting the Pieces #4: Weathered

Collecting the Pieces #3: Fragmented (2014) 14″ x 14″ x 2″

Collecting the Pieces #3: Fragmented

Collecting the Pieces #2: Falling (2014) 16″ x 16″ x 2″

Collecting the Pieces #2: Falling

Collecting the Pieces #1: Looking Back (2013) 12″ x 12″ x 1″

Collecting the Pieces #1: Looking Back

Intertidal Series

Inspired by the intertidal zone of the Bay of Fundy, this series explores formal elements of abstraction, the interplay between land and sea, and the beauty of the highly adaptable lifeforms that occupy this vulnerable niche between two worlds.

Intertidal Flow (2016) 10″ x 10″ x 1.5″

Intertidal Flow

Into the Blue (2015) 12″ x 12″ x 1″

Into the Blue

Intertidal Blues (2013) 12″ x 24″ x 2″

Intertidal Blues

At the Edge (2012) 24″ x 24″ x 2″ –Private Collection

At the Edge

Along the Beach Series: Mixed media encaustic paintings combine cellular, organic-based images and ideas inspired by my ink drawings, which are in turn inspired by my beach walks and interests in biology and evolution.

In #5, the right side of the painting is based on a photograph I took of a skeletal herring gull found on the Anchorage Beach about 10 years ago. Imbedded into sections of the gull skeleton are bones found on the same beach, including a gull’s head and small bone fragments of leg and rib, likely from harbour seals. In both #5 and #6, the contrast between the two sections speak of life and death, beginnings and endings, life emerging at the cellular level, and the accumulating fossil record of species long extinct, such as the 2013 fossil finding of the earliest feathered dinosaur in a quarry in China.

Along the Beach #5 (2012) 24″ x 24″ x 2″ – Private Collection

Along the Beach #5

Along the Beach #6 (2014) 24″ x 24″ x 2″

Along the Beach #6

Beach-combing: Whale Cove Witness: This beeswax encaustic painting is part of a series that arises out of my daily walks on beaches around Grand Manan, and my gathering of what I find there. Whale Cove Witness contains many small wave polished pebbles, and a piece of Minke whale bone. Other sections of this painting are based on rock conglomerates and cliff faces in the area, and an image of sea foam from a recent wave receding across silvery wet sand.

Flotsam & Ephemera Series: This series explores the grid as an organizational and aesthetic structure and my interest in processes of creation and decay. Such paintings are acts of discovery as layers are built up and then selectively scraped away to reveal some of what lies beneath. They are inspired both by the signs of wear and layers of history that I see on city doors, walls and sidewalks, and by the geological and environmental processes witnessed around me in the natural world everyday. Some of these paintings also contain photo transfers, mostly of people long dead, from the last century or the one before.

These paintings give a second life to objects now rejected by society: the unidentified object fragments washed-up on the beach or down-trodden at the verge of road, and discarded cultural artifacts. They are quiet meditative spaces reflecting on and memorializing the days, people, and cultural realities of the past and our tenuous, yet nevertheless significant, interconnectedness with it.

Memory Transfer Series: This series explores the past and our connections to it. Organized using a grid structure, the paintings incorporate photo transfers (historic photos from the Grand Manan Archives, my own photographic collection of historic postcards and people, photographs of found objects, and steel plate engravings), and found objects which are re-collected, committed to memory, and given new meaning and life through mixed media beeswax encaustic collage memorials.

“I Wrote My Life in Sand” is a memorial and a meditation on the transience of all things. Incorporating historic photos from the Grand Manan Archives, found imagery, my own photography of dead insects and flowers collected near my home, and materials gathered from daily walks on Whale Cove and Anchorage Beaches, it gives a second life to discarded objects and in combining them creates new meanings — a reconstructed history. The poem “I wrote my life in sand” is by my husband, Wayne Clifford, from The Exile’s Papers, Part 2, Porcupine’s Quill Press, 2009.

Memory Transfer: I Wrote My Life in Sand (Private Collection)

Memory Transfer: Whale Cove (2014) 12″ x 24″ x 2″

Memory Transfer: Whale Cove

Memory Transitions Series: Small beeswax encaustic mixed-media paintings which contain photo transfers from my shoebox archive, my own photographic practice, or the historic photos residing in the Grand Manan Archives. Loosely narrative, meditative and non-linear, meaning is constructed through personal association of images and memories, and so is fluid, different for each viewer.

Memory Transitions #1 (2012) 6″ x 6″ x 1″

Memory Transitions #1

Memory Transitions #2 (2012) 6″ x 6″ x 1″

Memory Transitions #2

Memory Transitions #3 (2012) 6″ x 6″ x 1″

Memory Transitions #3

Memory Transitions #4 (2012) 6″ x 6″ x 1″

Memory Transitions #4

Memory Transitions #5 (2012) 6″ x 6″ x 1″ – Private Collection

Memory Transitions #5 (Private Collection)

Memory Transitions #6 (2012) 6″ x 6″ x 1″

Memory Transitions #6

Memory Transitions #7 (2013) 6″ x 6″ x 1″

Memory Transitions #7

Memory Transitions #8 (2013) 6″ x 6″ x 1″ – Private Collection

Memory Transitions #8 (Private Collection)

Memory Transitions #9 (2013) 6″ x 6″ x 1″ – Private Collection

Memory Transitions #9 (Private Collection)

Memory Transitions #10 (2013) 6″ x 6″ x 1″ – Private Collection

Memory Transitions #10 (Private Collection)

Memory Transitions #11, (2013) 6″ x 6″ x 1″

Memory Transitions #11

Memory Transitions #12 (2014) 8″ x 8″ x 2″

Memory Transitions #12

Memory Transitions #13 (2015) 6″ x 6″ x 2″

Memory Transitions #13

Memory Transitions #14 (2015) 6″ x 6″ x 2″

Memory Transitions #14

Landscape Series

The Landscape Series includes the Horizon, Dory, Anchorage, Seascape and Wild Blue Yonder paintings created in 2007, 2011, 2012, 2015 and 2016. All of the paintings in this series deal with the landscape of Grand Manan, a landscape dominated by the sea. “The Dory” is set in my imagination at Dark Harbour, and features the dulsing dory of a friend of mine. The “Horizon” paintings express the beauty over the vast Bay of Fundy of sunrise and sunset, both of which can, on occasion, be so spectacular as to be not quite believeable. The “Anchorage” paintings incorporate photo transfers of standing dead spruce trees at the Anchorage Provincial Park, looking towards Gannet Rock Lighthouse, a beach I walk often with my dog. Anchorage #3 and #4 incorporate elements of collage using found objects, book pages, drawings and fishing twine to create the landscape of the beach and horizon.

Seascape #1 (2016) 12″ x 12″ x 1″

Seascape #1

Anchorage #4 (2016) 10″ x 10″ x 2″

Anchorage #4

Anchorage #3 (2015) 12″ x 12″ x 1″ – Private collection

Anchorage #3

Anchorage #1 8″ x 8″ x 2″ – Private Collection

Anchorage (Private Collection)

Anchorage #2 (11″ x 14″ x 1″) – Private Collection

Anchorage #2 (Private Collection)

Into the Wild Blue Yonder (2015) 8″ x 8″ x 2″ (Private Collection)

Into the Wild Blue Yonder

Patterning & Abstraction Series

Included in this series are “One, Two, Three”, “Four, Five, Six”, “Checkered Pear”, “Not a Chance”, “Four Square”, “Urban Mapping #2”, “Music in the City”, Modernism, Island Geometry and Building Lobster Traps paintings. They are playful geometric and grid-based designs which often contain stripes, squares, circles, repeat patterning and bold colours. Some contain found objects, some play with the idea of the quilt pattern, and others look at some of the preoccupations of modernism.

Island Geometry – Attuned (2016) 16″ x 20″ x 1″

Island Geometry – Attuned

Island Geometry: Circles (2016) 10″ x 10″ x 1.5″ – Private Collection

Island Geometry – Circles

Island Geometry – Building Lobster Traps (2016) 12″ x 12″ x 1″)

Island Geometry – Building Lobster Traps

Remembering Modernism (2013) 12″ x 12″ x 1″ – Private Collection

Remembering Modernism (Private Collection)

NEW MIXED MEDIA COLLAGE

In Between Her(e) and There (12″ x 12″ x 1″)

In Between Her(e) and There

Patterson’s Hiroshima Memorial (12″ x 48″ x 2″)

This large collage work is based on the life of a “Come From Away” Grand Mananer, my Great Uncle, George Sutton Patterson. Dr. Patterson was from Moncton, NB, and graduated from Mount Allison University in 1907 (where he met my Aunt Lena who also graduated at this time), and then from Columbia University where he received his PhD in Philosophy. He was a Canadian diplomat in Tokyo, Japan, during the 1930s and after the war, and in Boston in the early 1950s until his sudden death in 1953. In 1947 he was appointed by Lester B. Pearson to head the UN Commission on Korea; in the 1930s he was posted briefly in China, and during a 12 year period spanning the 1920s and early 1930s he was the Secretary of the International YMCA in Japan.

From my shoebox archive of inherited photos and memorabilia, found in the attic of their Grand Manan home when I was in my early 20s, I have scanned and then collaged historic photos from his life, including the entire transcript of his itinerary and the brochure on Hiroshima “The Atomic City”, published by the American Occupation Army, where my uncle toured the destroyed city in November of 1947. In 1999 I visited the Hiroshima War Memorial and the UNESCO World Heritage Site, the “Atomic Dome”, one of the few buildings left standing in this city of many converging rivers, situated near the epicenter of the detonation of the first atomic bomb. In the museum I saw the same brochure I found in my attic, the tone of which seems — from the perspective of almost seven decades following the dropping of the first atomic bombs on Japan — ironic, imperialistic and tragically understated. Visiting Hiroshima was one of the most powerful experiences of my life, and reading the first-hand testimonials of Hiroshima survivors after I returned to Canada added an even greater depth to my sorrow. Uncle George and Aunt Lena (nee Bartlett) Patterson lived in Japan for several decades. They had many friends and acquaintances there, befriended numerous Japanese families, and, being childless, put several young Japanese women through university. I can only imagine the sorrow they must have felt upon visiting Hiroshima after the war.

When approaching retirement age they decided that they would like to return to the Maritimes, and in the 1940s they discovered Grand Manan. Falling in love with it, they soon bought land, built a cabin and eventually a house. Both are now buried in the North Head Cemetary on the island. Although I never knew either of them, my aunt did know me as a baby. My mother visited them both on the island as a teenager and later brought my father. Eventually, when they themselves had children, they bought a summer home on the island.

Lena and George are my personal connection to the island — without their discovery of Grand Manan, this remote and unique island in the Bay of Fundy, I would not be living here today. I have created this war memorial to celebrate their lives — lives lived in a foreign country in the service of others — and as a remembrance to all who have been affected by the tragedy of Hiroshima.

I was interviewed this past August for an article about my recent solo show at the Grand Manan Island Art Gallery which was published in the Saint John Telegraph JournalSalon section. I thought I’d start off this blog by including some of the questions I was asked, and my answers to them.

This was my first solo show, and it spanned ten years of art production, which began around 2001 with black and white negative and colour slide photography, and ended with my most recent beeswax encaustic mixed media paintings, some of which also include photographs or photo transfers, which were made last winter and spring in my studio. A series of six slightly surreal B&W digital montage photographs, and of 20 large format table-top still life and memorial photographs were also part of this show. There were 47 16”x20” photographs in total, and 32 encaustic paintings in the show.

What inspired the title Memory, Moment, Meaning?When I thought about how I could tie this show together, under one title, I realized that every piece dealt either directly or indirectly with memory, meaning making, or the distilled, essential moment captured by the camera.

One moment captured by the camera, the memories it invokes, and then the meaning that is derived from it – they are really inseparable. They are also fluid and forever changing – as we change, so may the meaning of the work of art for us.

One body of work in this exhibit, the large-format tabletop still-lives, deals specifically with how meaning is created by association, and looks at the role played by memory, and how collections are ordered, in creating new meaning.

What is about photography that inspires you?The immediacy of it inspires me. I first fell in love with macro photography because it was pure, distilled emotion. It transported me to a quiet, still place. The fern before my lens would be transformed into something else, newly created by me – an expression of an emotional state.

The abstract expressionists and the impressionists have been important to me. These artists experimented with how the intersections between what one sees and what one feels could best be expressed through art. Some of the photographers whose work I have found inspirational are Minor White, Wynn Bullock, Ernst Haas, Irving Penn, and New Brunswick’s own Freeman Patterson, all of whose books I’ve learned a great deal from.

What is memory?Memory is how we make sense of the past, live in the present, and go forward into the future with a sense of continuity. Without memory, I don’t think there can be any sense of self. The camera’s ability to stop time, to record one brief moment, means that it is a powerful tool for creating and manipulating time and memory. I explore this in my still life compositions, creating small shrines and memorials to times past and to dead relatives I never knew, but of whom I have memories through stories my mother told me. I hope through these compositions to prompt powerful associations in those who see them as they bring to them their own memories.

What is moment?
To capture a moment is to isolate it from the flow of many. I believe that such moments help us see and feel more deeply. Moments captured with a camera also aid memory, and memories enrich our lives.

What is meaning?
Meaning does not reside just in the work of art, but in the viewer as well. If I have captured the essence of a strong human emotion, such as a sense of loss and nostalgia for a time long past, or a sense of beauty as captured among the petals of a flower in full bloom, I am pretty well assured that there will be others who will feel as strongly about the work as I did when I created it. This is what I aim for.

What inspires you to make art — photography in particular?
I’m interested in the big-little relationship. My favorite subject as a child was science, looking at the invisible world through a microscope.

My early photographic work was mostly in gardens and on beaches. I still photograph rocks a lot. Grand Manan has a fascinating geological history and the rock formations are different at each beach. I don’t ever tire of the abstract patterning I can find on the beaches and cliffs with my macro lens.

And I have a series of large format pieces in this exhibit, which are tabletop compositions of objects and photographs. I create shrines, memorials, or grids in these photographs to explore how meaning can be manipulated and controlled through different groupings of objects.

What sort of equipment do you use?I use a Nikon D90 digital SLR with an 18-105 zoom lens and an old 55mm Nikkor Micro, a 200 zoom, and wide-angle lenses on this digital camera and on older Nikon manual 35mm film cameras. I have pinhole and regular medium format cameras, and I also use a large format 4”x5” bellows camera. My plan for the future is to use my film cameras, develop my own film, scan the negatives, and print them digitally. Most of the photographs in this exhibit are taken with my old Nikon camera and a 55mm Micro lens with extension tubes, and a large format 4×5 bellows camera. A few are digitally captured, and some are photomontages digitally combined on the computer.

What drew you to photography in the first place?I grew up in a house with a lot of cameras. My parents, my elder brother and my maternal grandfather were always photographing birds, flowers, and people, so there was this family influence. My grandfather was the founding president of what is now CAPA and won many awards for his nature photography of birds.

I think I was really drawn to photography, however, through the influence of the early B&W photographers whose work I loved – Ansel Adams, Minor White, Paul Strand, and Jerry Uulesman, for instance. I still love black and white photography. My husband was also a good photographer and he encouraged me when I first started taking it seriously, and bought me my macro lens, which was a turning point for me, in how I saw the world. The macro lens is probably the real reason I continued to be interested in photography as an artistic medium.

Why art?I spent most of my early life reading a great deal and thought, growing up, that I wanted to be a writer. I always loved art, and grew up in a house with Inuit and Japanese prints and sculpture. Art was appreciated in my home, but it wasn’t something that we did, so it took me a while to figure out that I could.

In making art I can combine ideas which are more intellectual or verbal, with playfulness, abstraction or elements of design. I like the immediacy of the visual. I like having a product at the end of the creating process, and I like the physicality of the encaustic work, which can be built up or gouged back, collaged into or polished as smooth as glass. It also smells good hanging on the wall.

How do you juggle your making art with being curator/director of the Grand Manan Museum?Certain kinds of photography can be worked into almost every day, and daily beachcombing walks in the evening with my dog build up my collections for the beeswax works. My photography now sometimes finds its way into my mixed media encaustic work. When the weekends come I can get into the digital darkroom or the painting studio. I usually spend holidays creating art as well.

Since I took over as curator/director of the museum in May of this year, the only juggling has involved preparations for the various shows and presentations at the museum and for my own upcoming exhibit. The summer months are very busy at the museum, which is open from late May to late September. I plan on creating most of my art through the off-season months. I am also a high school supply teacher, so I do have some flexible time through the fall, winter and spring months.

How does curating effect or influence your own art practice?Since I have only been the curator and director of the Grand Manan Museum since May, my job hasn’t had much time yet to influence my art practice. I am, however, very interested in artifacts and photographic archives, so I’m sure that working in a museum will have some impact on my art practice. I have access to many artifacts now, which I can use as photographic subjects, and to historic imagery, which I can scan and incorporate into my mixed media work.